Ejime, from the Winter Print Collection (Fuyu no Hangashū)

This 1939 colour woodblock print depicts the "Ejime" — a traditional Akita rice-and-vegetable winter preparation — and is one of the five sheets of Katsuhira Tokushi's Fuyu no hangashū ("Winter Print Collection") of 1939. The composition treats the preparation and serving of the dish with the artist's characteristic ethnographic care, recording the cooking vessels, food materials, and table arrangement appropriate to the regional foodway. Produced in the strict jiga-jikoku-jizuri procedure of the sōsaku-hanga movement, the Ejime print belongs to one of Katsuhira's most cohesive small-format cycles and exemplifies his broader project of documenting the seasonal customs of his native Akita Prefecture in colour woodblock. Together with the other Fuyu no hangashū sheets — Kotatsu, Nerori, Cooking Stove, New Year decoration — it forms a small but unusually complete graphic record of the cooking and heating customs of pre-war Akita winter.